Tag: Google Cloud

The lack of a common framework for assessing Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) combined with the fact that no two CSPs are the same can complicate the process of selecting one that’s right for your organization. Selecting CSPs becomes even more complex when you consider the fact that more and more companies are adopting a multi-cloud approach for a variety of reasons, including cost savings, reduced risk of vendor lock-in, and data portability. (Gartner estimates that 75% of organizations will be using a multi-cloud strategy by 2022.) Add in the adoption of abstraction technologies such as containers, and workloads become for more portable between CSPs. To help you work through this, we’re using this post to discuss seven basic criteria you can use to identify providers that best match your business, technical, and operational needs.

You probably know AWS as the leading cloud platform provider. These days, however, many companies are using additional cloud providers as well. According to Gartner’s October 2018 report “Market Insight: Multicloud Becomes Essential for Cloud IaaS Offerings,” 49% of organizations were approaching their cloud computing IaaS strategy through multi-cloud adoption in 2017, and that is expected to increase to 75% by 2022. Most often they’re not trading one for another, but are choosing multiple providers for a variety of reasons: Different business requirements (such as managing risk and costs) may be better suited to different cloud vendors. Many vendors are likewise pricing their offerings competitively and continually adding new features.

The absence of a common framework for assessing Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), combined with the fact that no two CSPs are the same, complicates the process of selecting one that’s right for your organization. To help you work through this, we’re using this post to discuss seven basic factors you can use to identify a provider that can best match your business, technical, and operational needs.

In this post, we’re going to assume that you will be relying on public cloud infrastructure. There’s no reason to DIY (which can be costly, complex, and frustrating) when there are experts who can do it far better (no offense!). The shared responsibility model is such that you should be able to rely on cloud service providers to take care of the cloud itself while you focus on what’s in the cloud (your data and applications).

So, how do you choose a public cloud provider? First, it’s helpful to know who the major players are today.